


quiet birds in circled flight, soft stars that shine at night

by Anonymous



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Future Fic, post 8x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In the aftermath, Arya sleeps.It's a bone-tired rest, born out of exhaustion and the rush of the battle gradually fading away. Her blood still sings and her hands - always so steady and reliable - shake like leaves in the wind.





	quiet birds in circled flight, soft stars that shine at night

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem "Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep" by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

In the aftermath, Arya sleeps.

It's a bone-tired rest, born out of exhaustion and the rush of the battle gradually fading away. Her blood still sings and her hands - always so steady and reliable - shake like leaves in the wind.

It is a small mercy, how quick sleep comes and finds her, for in her dreams there is silence, warmth, a moment of peace. Her surroundings are as still as a world in a deep slumber.

There's no ice creaking as she steps upon the ground, as the enemies falls apart under her hands, no battle cries, no screams of wounded soldiers.

In the land of of her rest she's greeted by a long line of men and women and they all bow down at the sight of her, and in the faces of her ghosts she see those she has lost, long ago and just moments before.

Her father places a kiss on her forehead and her mother strokes through her hair and her brothers hug all the breath out of her body.

There are more ghosts, of all those who were taken from her far too soon.

One day she'll see them again, be among them as one of their kind.

Not today.

 

-

 

When she wakes again she finds herself staring into eyes so blue they make her yearn for a sea far away, when her heart belongs to no place but the North and its kind, her kind. It's not the blue of Night King and his army, cold and unnatural, not from this earth.

Instead they are warm, filled with light.

He smiles as she rouses, his features going impossibly softer at the sight of her waking. As if he didn't know she had survived, when they had found each other in the middle of the battlefield the night before, clutching the other's body so tight it hurt and pressing kisses to his neck and letting tears fall in the hollow of her collarbone.

Fate had given them a gift and now they had to make do with it.

They stay like this for hours, just two bodies laying next to each other, skin touching skin, as the sky turns grey again, content to have survived.

 

-

 

War is loud, it is bloody, painful. But it can be quiet too, consuming, burning like a fire, like freezing skin blistering from the cold. War contains multitudes of pain.

Dawn comes, rosy-finger, like the petals of a flower, like a torch ignited in the darkest of nights. Those who live mourn their dead, they count the bodies and they rebuild what is gone. It's a circle and it goes on.

Wherever she goes, whispers follow. They call her Defender of Winterfell, Kingslayer, She Who Ended The Longest Night.

She is the girl born in the height of summer.

She is no one.

She is Arya Stark and she is home.

 

-

 

In the songs the people in all of the Seven Kingdoms like to sing, love is found high and low. She has learned a great many things about people and the crimes they commit under its influence, the hardships they endure for it.

How they kill for it, wage never-ending wars in the name of love.

But they also live for it, fight through the night, for just another touch and another kiss and another shared breath.

Maybe once this war too was born out of love, a love that never should have been found, a series of events set in motion by her aunt crowned Queen of Love and Beauty by a king who should've minded his own damn business.

But then she wouldn't standing here.

They have found themselves at the same crossroads again now. A Stark and a Targaryen, - for her brother will always be her brother and for he is a wolf rather than a dragon - as well as a Stark and a Baratheon.

This war ends now, she will make it so.

 

-

 

"Would you go to war for me," she asks him in the quiet dawn of another morning, her hands touching his palm to palm, and prays for his answer to be no. Fate has a merciless sense of humour, history may never repeat itself as far as she is concerned.

"I did just do that, didn't I?" Gendry answers, the smallest smile playing around the edges of his lips. The wounds on his skin are healing, scars he'll keep for the rest of his life. His blood is not northern, but he fought for them regardless.

For her.

The North remembers.

She'll accept this.

 

-

 

The Queen is dead, her green eyes shut forever.

The Iron Throne is empty, until another shall take it.

It is not hers, but she'll have an opinion to weigh in on.

The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

The Starks are pack, bound together by blood and loyalty and the cold of the North.

They won't bend the knee to anyone.

 

-

 

There are certain perks, she'll admit as much. People call her milady a lot these days, sure, but she ignores it just as she ignores his stupid smiles and the satisfaction it brings to his face.

But she has a certain kind of political capital that was foreign to her before.

She kisses her bull-headed smith in broad daylight, right in front of everyone who stops to stare; next to Sansa, who can barely contain rolling her eyes and a gentle smile, and nobody can keep her from it.

Arya could get used to it.

Gendry is far more concerned for her honour and reputation.

"It's not fit for a Lady to be seen with someone like me," he pants into her ear between two kisses, after she has pulled him into a secluded corner, their backs pressed against brick walls.

"Don't you worry, I'll make a Lord out of you," she tells him and means it.

 

-

 

She wonders what her father would say if he could see what has become of them, but she thinks he might laugh until the wrinkles of his eyes crinkle with delight. One of his daughters marrying the son of the Old King, just not the way anyone would've seen coming. 

She hopes her ghosts are close to her on this night before her wedding day, she hopes they can rest easily.

Bran sits next to her during dinner, more himself than the raven taking up space in his body and mind, but still quiet and reserved. 

"It's a song of ice and fire, you know?" he says suddenly, his gaze resting on her. She would never admit so, but it unnerves her just slightly. "The cold snow of the North and the scorching heart of the Forge, burning like fury."

She blinks two times, taking his words in, swallowing them like broken glass. "Don't you dare," she says, and punches his shoulder ever so lightly.

He laughs and it's the closest she has come to getting her little brother back as he once was. "The future is many things, sister, and you'll get to see it."

She tears her gaze away from Bran and look at Gendry instead, how smiles back at her just as he always does. He laces his fingers with hers, links theirs hands and squeezes in reassurance. 

Arya certainly does hope to see another dawn and another dawn and another dawn. 

 


End file.
